"All Programs" Ugliness

It's all in the details

Published on October 25, 2005 By azdruid In WindowBlinds

This is a rant, not a whining diatribe. Thank you.

Has anyone else among the WindowBlinds community noticed the interesting variations regarding the All Programs button in the Start Menu? By default, XP's skinning engine and even SkinStudio do an ugly little color overlay instead of a nice bitmap. Case and point:

This is MikeB314's Arrow, a very slick skin. I like it because it does a good job of providing a Vista-like look on Windowblinds 5. HOWEVER, have a look at what happens when you mouseover the All Programs button! Yes, an ugly color overlay. I find this disappointing, because compared to the amount of effort put into the skin in general (clearly a lot), it seems almost ridiculous to miss this little detail.

This is Pixtudio's Noire, which, in my opinion, has set the new bar for awesomeness in a skin, has ("AAARGHH!") a color overlay instead of a proper button. This looks really damned bad amidst a very slick Start Menu.

And it can't be that hard to implement a proper solution. Take a look at danilloOC's 5imple, another terrific skin:

Now that's what I'm talking about: a pretty mouseover button that blends in.

I hope this isn't sounding too much like a giant drawn-out complaint. I just wish to draw attention to a part of a WindowBlinds skin which I believe should not be neglected. It really does decrese the overall quality of the Start Menu (and the entire skin) when not-so-subtle things like this are not addressed.

Thanks for putting up with me.......

Comments

NightTrainthedark

on Oct 25, 2005

Skinning it using a button will mess up things on some non-english systems. Keeping it with a colored mouseover guarantees there will be no problems for anyone. A skinner must decide how imporatant it is. MikeB314's skins are premium releases so they have to work for every system. Thats why some have a skinned button and others do not.

I try to match the mouseover color to the background when possible and let the arrow do the highlighting but it is impossible with some skins.

MarkMcQ

on Oct 25, 2005

The reason for most people using the colours is that by default, that area isn't skinned. To have it look like a button, you have to get clever with the arrow image, and make it the full size of the 'all programs' button. Then you use content margins to make it align correctly. It's not a documented feature, so most people don't use it or are even aware of how to do it.

Hippie

on Oct 25, 2005

Hadn't noticed it till you brought it up. Is kinda crappy, but the rest makes up for it. I'm using Azenia. It's not like I leave the start menu all the time

DigitalCHET

on Oct 25, 2005

It's extremely fiddly getting that to look right and as Night Train pointed out, it can come out messed up on some systems.
Personally, I usually try to skin it where the skin really calls for it, otherwise I use Night Train's method of matching the mouseover colour with the background.

I do wish there was a better/easier way to skin this though.

Daiwa

on Oct 25, 2005

Here's hoping Vista implements that menu better and in a reliably skinnable form.

Cheers,
Daiwa

azdruid

on Oct 25, 2005

Thanks, guys. I wasn't aware that the button fix did funny things to localized systems. I have indeed seen skins that match the mouseover with the background, and that probably is the best way to do it for the time being.

Hopefully the Skinstudio and Windowblinds teams will be able to work some mojo and give us a reliable and/or documented method of doing this!

_Martin_

on Oct 26, 2005

Another minor issue that occurs is that if a user is using large fonts then the image for all programs can start to tile which looks pretty ugly. This occurs on many otherwise "high quality" skins.

ThoriumKnight

on May 29, 2009

azdruid

reply 6

Hopefully the Skinstudio and Windowblinds teams will be able to work some mojo and give us a reliable and/or documented method of doing this!

They actually have in WindowBLinds/Skinstudio 6.4

2of3

on May 29, 2009

Yup......... 4 years after the original post

vStyler

on May 29, 2009

They actually have in WindowBLinds/Skinstudio 6.4

Only in Vista... onwards.

messiah1

on May 29, 2009

necro-thread alert.

WOM

on May 29, 2009

Hehe, someone seems to have had nothing better to do(lots of free time).

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